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Friday, 14 February 2014

Indian Navy’s
major annual exercise Tropex (Theatre level readiness and operational exercise)
is under way and the participating units include aircraft carrier INS Viraat,
the Russian-origin nuclear-powered submarine, the INS Chakra and the US-origin
surveillance plane, the Boeing P8-I.

Navy Chief Admiral
DK Joshi and Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command Vice
Admiral Anil Chopra, embarked on the combined fleets at sea off the East Coast
today. The Eastern and Western fleets of the Navy are currently engaged in a
month-long exercise.

The exercise is
being conducted against the backdrop of two completely networked fleets, widely
dispersed across the Indian Ocean. Missile, torpedo and gun-firing will be
undertaken.

This year’s
exercise will witness maiden participation of the recently acquired P8I
maritime reconnaissance aircraft as also Hawk fighter trainer aircraft. Besides
UAVs and airborne early warning helicopter of the Indian Navy, air-to-air
refuellers, Jaguars and SU-30 aircraft of Indian Air Force will also be
deployed. An amphibious unit of the Indian Army having launch capability from a
specialised warship is also a part of the exercise.

Tropex has the
participation of some 40 ships and as many aircraft.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140214/nation.htm#12

AFT declines relief to 52 pensioners

Tribune News
Service

Chandigarh,
February 13

The Chandigarh
Bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has dismissed a bunch of 52 petitions
in which ex-servicemen had sought grant of arrears that arose after the
fixation of pension anomalies.

The petitions,
filed by personnel below officer rank (PBOR), sought arrears for revised scales
applicable between January 1997 to October 1997.

On implementation
of the Fifth Pay Commission, the pay scales in respect of PBOR were revised
with effect from January 1996 and subsequently rationalised effect from October
10, 1997.

Jawan gets bail

The Armed Forces
Tribunal has granted bail to a jawan, awarded four months imprisonment by a
court martial, for his involvement in a case of collective indiscipline in an
armoured unit.

The jawan, Dinesh
Kumar, had been charged and found guilty of four charges against him for
absence from duty, abetment whereby he instigated his unit soldiers to absent
themselves without leave from the unit and act prejudicial to good order and
military discipline.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140214/edit.htm#7

UK & Bluestar: Nothing unusual about it

Britain's
cooperation with India is not unusual and neither is Operation Bluestar
unprecedented. What is needed is a lessons learnt exercise to ensure there is
no repeat of the politics that led to such a situation so as to put a closure
to the unfortunate incident and to move on.

Dinesh Kumar

Recent revelations
that an officer of the Special Air Services (SAS), a British Special Force,
reconnoitred the Golden Temple Complex in February 1984 and gave advice to the
Indian government on the latter's request on how to flush out the armed militia
led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale from inside the premises of the holy shrine
has evoked considerable dismay and outrage among sections of the Sikh community
both in India and overseas, especially among those residing in the United Kingdom.
'How could have the British Government rendered advice to the Indian government
to attack the holiest shrine of the Sikhs? is their angry question.

Notwithstanding,
the fact remains that at the operational level it appears that whatever was the
rendered advice, it was either not passed on to the Army or, even in case it
was, it was not followed by the formation commanders during Operation Bluestar
which had taken place less than four months after the visit of the SAS officer.
The content of that advice is yet to be publicly revealed. As Lieutenant
General Kuldip Singh Brar, who as General Officer Commanding of 9 Division in
the rank of Major General had led Operation Bluestar, has repeatedly stated,
the Army action was planned over barely five days (June 1 to 5) prior to
Operation Bluestar and executed over a single night (June 5/6).

Saudi-French
military action in Mecca

The short answer
is that it is not unusual for countries to seek advice from each other. Neither
was Operation Bluestar unprecedented. For, just four-and-a-half-years earlier,
the world witnessed a similar operation inside the holiest shrine of the
Muslims, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The operation that lasted two weeks
witnessed the active involvement of the French Special Forces, essentially
Christian and non-Muslim and therefore 'infidel'.

The incident dates
to 20th November 1979, the first day of the year 1400 according to the Islamic
calendar, when Juhayman al-Utaybi along with 400 to 500 followers seized
Islam's holiest shrine and proclaimed Mohammed Abdullah-al-Qahtani as the Mahdi
or messiah. The gunmen smuggled their weapons into the mosque in coffins,
declared the Saudi family illegitimate and held hostage hundreds of worshippers
who were on a pilgrimage.

As was faced by
the Indian Army in the Golden Temple complex, the Saudi Army had little
intelligence of the number of gunmen or hostages taken, faced heavy casualties
during a frontal assault, found themselves at the receiving end of ambushes and
sniper fire and ended up using heavy weaponry including tanks while making no
headway with announcements for surrender over the public address system. The
gunmen eventually took refuge in the basement and finally the Saudi Arabian
government turned to the Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, the
Special Forces unit of the French armed forces, which ended up commanding the
Saudi forces but did not actually participate in the attack since non-Muslims
are not allowed inside the holy city. The 14 day operation, which ended on 4th December
1979, resulted in the death of 255 persons including 127 Saudi soldiers and
injuries to 560 including 451 soldiers. The unofficial figures are much higher.
The one major difference, however, was that the Saudi's got the ulema to issue
a fatwa permitting the use of deadly force to re-take the Grand Mosque from the
terrorists. But even this fatwa came after three long days of persuasion.
Unlike Bhindranwale who was killed in the Army operation, Juhayaman and 67 of
his followers were captured, secretly tried, convicted and then publicly
beheaded in different cities of Saudi Arabia.

When the ISI
cooperated with RAW

The revelation of
British assistance to India has also evoked similar surprise among a section of
non-Sikh politicians in the country. 'How could have the Indian government
compromised on their sovereignty and sought advice from the very country that
until only 27 years earlier had colonised and ravaged India for over 200
years?' is their indignant question.

The fact is that
truth is stranger than fiction and history is replete with examples of
intelligence agencies, on occasions, cooperating with even their adversaries.
The game of realpolitik, as any practitioner or theorist of statecraft ranging
from Kautilya and Sun Tzu to Machiavelli will explain, is altogether different
and, most will argue, is necessary.

Incredible as it
may sound, one such example of cooperation between two adversaries was between
India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate (ISI), the very agency which has executed some major
terror attacks in India. Interestingly, this phase of cooperation occurred at
the height of terrorist violence in Punjab which was being fuelled by the ISI.
All this occurred during the tenure of the much hated President Zia-ul-Haq, a
former Pakistani Army chief who as an India baiter aggressively pursued the
building of the Islamic (nuclear) bomb, pandered to Islamist radicals and under
who the syllabus of Pakistani history school books were further Islamised and
made stridently more anti-India and anti-non Muslim.

The cooperation
was facilitated by Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan who was a personal
friend of Rajiv Gandhi when the latter was Prime Minister. Prince Hasan's wife
is of Pakistani origin and he also personally knew General Zia-ul-Haq when as a
middle-rung officer he had been earlier posted in Amman as a commanding officer
of a Pakistani unit based in the Jordanian capital. Ironically, several years
earlier during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, Amman had sided with Pakistan and
provided them Jordanian Air Force fighter aircraft.

Prince Hassan had
then separately contacted Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President Zia-ul-Haq
and suggested that the chiefs of the RAW and the ISI meet to discuss Pakistan's
support to terrorists in Punjab along with other issues. The first meeting
between the then RAW chief, AK Verma, and the then ISI chief, Lieutenant
General Hamid Gul, was held in Amman with Prince Hassan personally present
during the initial moments before leaving the venue of the meeting in order to
allow the two Intelligence chiefs to continue their discussion. This was
followed by a second meeting between the two in Geneva.

The two countries
came close to resolving the Siachen issue as a result of these meetings and the
ISI secretly handed over four Sikh soldiers who had earlier crossed over to Pakistan
after deserting the Indian Army while posted in Jammu and Kashmir. Dialogue and
cooperation between the RAW and the ISI had continued even after Benazir Bhutto
came into power in elections held soon after General Zia-ul-Haq's death in
August 1988 but came to a halt after Nawaz Sharif succeeded Benazir Bhutto as
Prime Minister in the early 1990s. It was during Benazir Bhutto's tenure that
the ISI's support to terrorists in Punjab had begun to decline although it
correspondingly intensified in Jammu and Kashmir.

There is also the
interesting example of the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency,
training a contingent each of the Indian special forces, the Sri Lankan special
forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at the same time and at
the same place in Israel during the 1980s long before New Delhi established
diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv as is brought out by former Mossad agent
Viktor Ostrovsky in his book By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a
Mossad Officer. Then again, there is the incident of Indo-US intelligence
cooperation during the height of the Cold War when in the late 1960s the two
sides cooperated to install a US-supplied plutonium powered transceiver in the
Himalayas to detect and report data on future Chinese nuclear tests following
Beijing's first nuclear test in October 1964.

Key issues need to
be addressed

The decision to
order Army troops into the Golden Temple and the hastiness with which the
operation was planned raises a question on the quality of governance and
decision making. There is first and foremost a need for a serious debate on why
and how the political executive and its advisors at that time allowed such a
situation to build up in the first place that subsequently necessitated them to
order a military action.

Secondly, although
the Army can say it was following orders given by the government, the question
remains on whether it made sense for the Army to plan and execute a close
quarter battle (CQB) operation of such intensity and sensitivity on such a
short notice and with abysmally minimal intelligence in one of the country's
holiest shrine.

Thirty years on,
Operation Bluestar remains the subject of considerable controversy and
continues to evoke strong negative emotion among large sections of the Sikh
community. It has since cost the country the life of a Prime Minister that in
turn led to Congress party-inspired brutal killings of Sikhs in Delhi and other
parts of the country and revived terrorism in Punjab that lasted a decade and
which cost several thousand lives. For, the operation is still perceived as an
attack on the holy shrine rather than on a band of armed militia that had
fortified the premises of the Golden Temple complex and buildings in the
periphery after smuggling in weapons and explosives and from where they ran a
virtual parallel government and spread terror across the state.

Among defence
analysts, there remains the question of whether the Army could have executed
Operation Bluestar in a better way so as to have inflicted minimal damage and
casualties inside the complex. The debate is endless but what is disconcerting
is that the Army never conducted a post-Operation Bluestar lessons learnt
exercise. One other critical question remains, which in fact did arise at a later
date in May 1993 with respect to the holy Charar-e-Sharief sufi shrine in the
Kashmir valley with disastrous consequences: What would the Army have done if
some of Bhindranwale's armed militia had taken armed positions inside the
sanctum sanctorum, the Harminder Sahib? Unlike with the Akal Takht, the
temporal seat, on which the Army fired about 20 tank shells to neutralise the
heavily fortified positions, the Army would have been constrained to launch an
assault on the sanctum sanctorum had the latter been similarly fortified. A
retreat would not only have resulted in a loss of face to the Army but would
still not have served the purpose of vacating the shrine premises of the armed
militia.

There is need for
both the Congress and the Akalis to introspect on the politics they played in
the 1980s that had culminated in an Army action aimed at vacating Bhindranwale
and his gunmen from the holy shrine. Similarly, the Army should also have
carried out a lessons learnt exercise following Operation Bluestar (and the
Charar-e-Sharief episode) on how they could have handled the operation better.
This would be necessary in order to once and for all put a closure to Operation
Bluestar. For how long can a country, society and a community hold on to the
past?

Singapore:A UK trade body has said that it still sees
the potential of supplying Eurofighter to India, which has postponed till the
next fiscal its plan to buy 126 fighter planes from France's Dassault Aviation.

"We are very
keen, should the opportunity arise, to offer India a cost effective
solution," Adam Thomas, a senior spokesman for the Defence & Security
Organization at the UK Trade and Investment, told PTI at the Singapore Airshow
here.

Noting that the
Indian government was still in discussion with Dassault Aviation, he said,
"We respect the Indian system and, if asked, clearly we would be happy to
talk to the Indian government."

The deal for the
126 jets, when concluded, will be the largest ever for combat aircraft.

Thomas noted that
India's Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) programme is one of the major
attractions to woo FDI to the country's defence sector.

He said UK's
defence industry has welcomed India's decision to raise FDI in defence to 49
per cent from 26 per cent.

"We hope that
there could be more flexibility in the future to make India an attractive
partner for inward investment," he said.

Thomas expressed
the UK's defence industry's interest in establishing "strong business
relationships" with Indian private and public sectors.

"India
remains an important security market for the United Kingdom," he said.

"We have seen
quite a capability development in the Indian public and private sectors. We
have also seen how the electronics industry has developed not only to provide
for the India armed forces but also holds the potential of exporting
equipment," said Thomas, who was part of the UK delegation at Defexpo held
in New Delhi earlier this month.

"We want to
find how we can get British companies to work with the Indians to jointly
develop equipment that can be used not only by the Indian armed forces, but
perhaps the UK armed forces and export to a third market," he said.

"We see
Indian companies as joint venture partners. We see supplying to the Indian
market around a theme of partnership," said Thomas, noting that both the
UK and Indian armed forces were undergoing transformations. .

Havildar Nadeem
Iqbal of Indian Army has the rare distinction of becoming the first soldier
from Jammu and Kashmir to qualify for the Winter Olympics being held at Sochi,
Russia from 07 Feb 2014 to 25 Feb 2014 and is the only one from three Services
as well one among three sportsmen representing the country at the highest
pedestal of winter sports.

This 30 years old
Army Skier joined the Army Ski Team being trained under the aegis of High
Altitude Warfare School, Gulmarg in September 2004. Having gone through a
grueling training cycle under most trying conditions, the individual gradually
emerged as a promising skier of the prestigious Army Ski Team.

Ever since he
joined the High Altitude Warfare School, which is a premier training
establishment of the Indian Army in Winter and Mountain Warfare, Havildar
Nadeem Iqbal has been trained with a laid out strict training discipline which
includes development of basic skills, honing of skiing techniques, provision of
specialist equipment and above all a tailor made training package to build his
physical and mental robustness, essential for athletes to rise up to such
heights.

High Altitude
Warfare School has the distinction of producing two more skiers who have
represented the country in the Winter Olympics in the past.Havildar Nadeem
Iqbal in his journey up to Winter Olympics has gained sufficient experience by
participating at various National and International Ski ChampionshipsHe has been a National Champion from year
2009 to year 2013 as well as secured first position in 1st South Asian Winter
Games, Auli (Uttrakhand) in 2011.

He also
participated in VIIth Asian Winter Games, Almaty (Kazakhistan) in the same
year.The individual participated
inFederation of International Ski
(FIS) Races-2013 at Shemshak, Iran in FIS Nordic World Skiing Championship held
in Italy in 2013. To qualify for the Winter Olympics, Havildar Nadeem Iqbal
participated in various events organized by FIS under most challenging
conditions and very strict selection norms.To earn the mandatory qualifying points for the Winter Olympics, the
individual participated in FIS races organized by Federation of International
Ski in Italy and France in Nov-Dec 2013.

The competition in
these events was of a very high standard which required extreme talent and hard
work. The individual belongs to a very humble family from village- Bada Kana
(Rajouri) in Jammu and Kashmir. He has two children and has reached this level
with sheer hard work, dedication and untiring spirit to make it big
Conditioning by the best qualified instructional staff of High Altitude Warfare
School, Gulmarg proved shot in arm for Havildar Nadeem for qualifying in 15 Km
Nordic Free Style event for the Winter Olympics Sochi. The event is scheduled
on 14 Feb 2014.The whole country
especially State of Jammu and Kashmir will expect another Olympic Medal from
him and he is likely to do proud to the Indian Army.

Despite attempted
reforms, India’s defense procurement system remains tainted by corruption and
wrongdoing. Today, Deba Mohanty explains why New Delhi has failed to solve a
problem that puts the country’s military modernization efforts at risk.

By Deba R Mohanty
for ISN

India’s defense
procurement sector continues to be rocked by instances of corruption and
wrongdoing that have the potential to compromise the country’s military
modernization program. Worse still, such irregularities may yet have a bearing
on domestic politics ahead of May’s presidential elections.

Current
controversies

At least three
major scandals – two of them related to purchases by ordnance factories and one
to the Indian Air Force (IAF) – have led to the blacklisting of nine companies
in the past eight years. Currently, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
is investigating more than twenty cases of corruption and undue influence.
India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has also blacklisted four major international
companies - Rheinmetall Air Defence (RAD), Singapore Technologies Kinetics Ltd.
(STK), Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI) and Corporation Defence Russia
(CDR) – and the former chief of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) was arrested
and jailed in 2010 for wrongdoing.

More recently, the
MoD cancelled the purchase of 12 AW 101 helicopters worth $570 million as a
result of the violation of an Integrity Pact by Finmeccanica subsidiary Augusta
Westland International (UK) Limited. The violation resulted in investigations
by the CBI into the activities of 11 individuals, including top executives of
Augusta and Finmeccanica, the former Chief of the IAF, as well as four
additional companies (two foreign and two). Opposition parties have also used
the violation to pressure the Indian defense minister A K Antony into making a
suo moto statement on the issue, which he is likely to make in the current
session of Parliament, if he is allowed to.

However, New
Delhi’s response to the AW 101 contract has thus far been confusing. First,
while the ‘chopper scam’ is under investigation by the CBI, questions have been
raised over the wisdom of the Indian Foreign Policy Promotion Board (FIPB)’s -
the agency that approves foreign investments in India – decision to give the
nod to a joint venture between Augusta Westland and Tata Sons known as Indian Rotorcraft
Limited. The company will assemble single engine helicopters and cater to the
domestic as well as global markets. In light of recent developments, the MoD is
far from comfortable with this decision.

Conversely, the
Indian Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) - the body which approves all defense
acquisition proposals - has put the proposed purchase of 98 Black Shark heavy
weight torpedoes for the ongoing Scorpene submarine project on ice. These are
manufactured by Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquel, which also happens to be a
subsidiary of Finmeccanica. Adding to the confusion is the current status of
the tender for 127 mm guns for Indian Navy warships. BAe Systems has reportedly
left the tendering process, leaving Oto Melara – another Finmeccanica subsidiary
– as the single bidder.

Finally, India’s
protracted Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition remains a
thorn in New Delhi’s side. While A K Antony continues to argue that a final
decision on the acquisition of 126 fighter aircraft has been delayed due to
time-consuming negotiations on life cycle cost calculations and offset
arrangements, insiders blame the slowness on lengthy investigations into
various complaints lodged by senior Indian politicians. These include Yashwant
Sinha, the head of the powerful Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance,
who has even written a letter to the Defence Minister, urging him to reconsider
the MMRCA contract.

Nothing new

However,
corruption associated with defense purchases has plagued Indian military
acquisitions for decades. The Bofors scandal of the late 1980s, for example, is
a case in point. In order to win a contract to supply India with field guns,
the Swedish industrial giant allegedly gave kickbacks to then-Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi and members of his government. This not only resulted in the fall
of Gandhi’s Indian National Congress government, its negative impact on the
Indian artillery modernization continues to haunt the country’s Army. As a
result, at least four rounds of artillery purchase tenders have either been
cancelled or re-tendered in the last ten years, leading to serious problems in
terms of availability and supply. Accordingly, investigations into the AW 101
contract may also have serious implications for India’s military modernization
program, especially if Finmeccanica and its subsidiaries are blacklisted as a
result of CBI investigations, even though both cases are different.

So why has New
Delhi failed to bring corrupt practices that hurt the country’s military
development – and, indeed, its defense industry - under control? Such problems
can be traced back to what may be termed as the ‘systemic complexities’ found
within the administrative organs of the state, most notably the MoD. These
‘complexities’ have allowed the MoD and its Integrated Headquarters to function
in a closed and relatively autonomous manner for generations. Indeed, such
practices continue to this day despite the introduction of a series of reforms
to the higher defense management sector over the past decade or so.

In addition, the
Indian Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) remains a complex process that often
invites trouble. Currently, the DPP consists of a 12 step procurement process,
starting with a request for information (RFI) and concluding with the signing
of a contract and post-contract management. While the MoD is ultimately
responsible for awarding the contract, there are still too many
multi-disciplinary oversight committees that blur the accountability factor.
Vaguely worded procedural requirements and ill-defined or insufficiently
explained provisions, like ‘offsets’, pre-contract integrity pact’, ‘transfer
of technology’ (to name but a few), also make tender processes complicated.

Indeed, such
provisions are quite often tweaked to suit the needs of vendors. For instance,
the DPP also has a section entitled ‘political and strategic considerations’.
This gives the MoD the power to choose a weapons system from a particular state
and/or supplier that also offers other political and strategic dividends. So
while negotiations and processes associated with the MMRCA contract might have
followed rules and regulations, such ‘dividends’ cannot be ruled out. Finally,
preliminary investigations and legal procedures associated with tender
processes can run for years, if not decades. Little wonder then that the DPP
has been revised nine times in the past 12 years, but still fails to address
issues of transparency and accountability in a meaningful manner.

Flattering to
deceive

It should be noted
that it took nearly two decades for the CBI to file a closure report on the
Bofors scandal, an outcome that only reinforces that vendors and end-users both
end up losing if arms deals of this magnitude go wrong. It also took nearly a
decade for it to file a similar report on the role of South Africa’s Denel in
an ordnance factory scam. In this respect, A K Antony’s continued determination
in recent years to blacklist contractors, cancel contracts and even punish
individuals is to be commended. India most certainly needs robust armed forces
modernization and a transparent defense procurement system to realize its key
objectives. However, the complexity and apparent opacity of the DPP – not to
mention decisions taken by organs like the FIPB – suggest that New Delhi’s push
for transparency will fall short of expectations for the foreseeable future.

It is being
estimated that China’s defence budget will reach a whopping US $148 billion in
2014, second only to the defence budget of the USA and leaving behind the
combined defence budgets of western nations such as Germany, France and the
United Kingdom. China’s defence budget has risen each year for two decades and
the trend shows no sign of abating. Thanks to rapidly rising defence
expenditures by China and Russia, global defence spending is rising for the
first time in five years. Across Asia-Pacific, there is an arms race brewing as
nations try to secure their interests at a time of geopolitical transition. The
region is likely to account for nearly 28 per cent of global defence spending
by 2020.

Last year China
had hiked its defence budget by 10.7 per cent to USD 115.7 billion, well above
India’s defence spending of USD 37.4 billion. While its civilian leadership has
tried to downplay the increase suggesting much of it will go to human resources
development, infrastructure and training, it is the response of the Chinese
military that should be a matter of concern. The military has been unambiguous
in suggesting when it comes to military spending, there is no need for China
“to care about what others may think”.

Divisions within
China about the future course of the nation’s foreign policy are starker than
ever before. It is now being suggested that much like young Japanese officers
in the 1930s, young Chinese military officers are increasingly taking charge of
strategy with the result that rapid military growth is shaping the nation’s
broader foreign policy objectives.

Civil-military
relations in China are under stress with the PLA asserting its pride more
forcefully than even before and demanding respect from other states. Not
surprisingly, China has been more aggressive in asserting its interests not
only vis-à-vis India but also vis-à-vis the US, the EU, Japan and Southeast
Asian states. There is a sense that China can now prevail in conflicts with its
regional adversaries. Some voices have openly called for wars. The Air Force
Colonel, Dai Xu, has argued that in light of China’s disputes with Japan in the
East China Sea and Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea, a short,
decisive war, like the 1962 border clash with India, would deliver long-term
peace. This would be possible, as Washington would not risk war with China over
these territorial spats, according to this assessment.

The increasing
assertion by the Chinese military and changing balance of power in the nation’s
civil-military relations is a real cause of concern for China’s neighbours. The
pace of Chinese military modernisation has already taken the world by surprise
and it is clear that the process is going much faster than many had
anticipated. China launched its first aircraft carrier last year as well as
several versions of new fighter jets including a stealth fighter bracing to
deal with big US military push into Asia Pacific.

A growing economic
power, China is now concentrating on the accretion of military might so as to
secure and enhance its own strategic interests. China, which has the largest
standing army in the world with more than 2.3 million members, continues to
make the most dramatic improvements in its nuclear force among the five nuclear
powers, and improvements in conventional military capabilities are even more
impressive.

What has been
causing concern in Asia and beyond is the opacity that seems to surround
China’s military build-up, with an emerging consensus that Beijing’s real
military spending is at least double the announced figure. Tensions are
escalating between China and its neighbours. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe
has suggested the two countries are “in a similar situation” to Germany and
Britain just before the outbreak of World War One.

At this critical
juncture in the regional strategic landscape, India’s own defence modernisation
programme is faltering despite this being at a time when India is expected to
spend $112 billion on capital defence acquisitions over the next five years in
what is being described as “one of the largest procurement cycles in the
world”. Indian military planners are shifting their focus away from Pakistan as
China takes centre-stage in future strategic planning.

Over the past two
decades, the military expenditure of India has been around 2.75 per cent but
since India has been experiencing significantly higher rates of economic growth
over the last decade compared to any other time in its history, the overall resources
that it has been able to allocate to its defence needs has grown significantly.
The armed forces for long have been asking for an allocation of 3% of the
nation’s GDP to defence. The Indian Parliament has also underlined the need to
aim for the target of 3% of the GDP. Yet as a percentage of the GDP, the annual
defence spending has declined to one of its lowest levels since 1962. And now
with a slow-down in the Indian economy, the Indian prime minister has suggested
that the golden age of defence modernisation is already over.

But defence
expenditure alone will not solve all the problems plaguing Indian defence
policy. More damagingly, for the last several years now the defence ministry
has been unable to spend its budgetary allocation. The defence acquisition
process remains mired in corruption and bureaucratese. India’s indigenous
defence production industry has time and again made its inadequacy to meet the
demands of the armed forces apparent. The Indian armed forces keep waiting for
arms while the finance ministry is left with unspent budget year after year.
Most large procurement programmes get delayed resulting in cost escalation and
technological or strategic obsolescence of the budgeted items. The present
defence minister has been one of the most ineffective leaders of India’s
defence establishment.

The Indian
government is yet to demonstrate the political will to tackle the defence
policy paralysis that is rendering all the claims of India’s rise as a military
power increasingly hollow. The capability differential between China and India
is rising at an alarming rate. Without a radical overhaul of the national
security apparatus, Indian defence planners will not be able to manage China’s
rise.

An effective
defence policy is not merely about deterring China. But if not tackled
urgently, India will lose the confidence to conduct its foreign policy
unhindered from external and internal security challenges.